A Gang Tagger got my car door just before dawn. Called the
Sheriff, who wrote info and took photos. Called insurance company. Started driving to the auto body shop. On the way, I explained to all drivers at stoplights who were looking at me driving along with black spray paint tag on the driver's door that it happened overnight and I was on my way to the body shop. Fortunately for me, the car was still cool, and there was a product they could use to wipe off the spray paint.

Old graffiti in garage...famous artist...worth serious $$$...if I were to dismantle the wall :)

I haven't had any on my own home or property, but there is an electrical box at the end of my street that consistently gets nailed.

@dcostboy do tell!

I live in a area, where there are only 7 colors to paint your house, if by chance someone did spray graffiti. The graffiti police. ( yes we have them) and gets rid of it pronto. I think some of it is beautiful. And the artist have real talent. When done in a certain area, with permission, I see it as art. But, not on someone's house or car. I don't like the tagging by gang members in black spray paint that is awful.

The house next door is surrounded by a tall stucco wall that constantly gets tagged. Nothing artistic, just black letters no one can read.

The graffiti cleanup guy was out the other day cleaning our sidewalk with a power washer. I'd never seen one with that much pressure, but it took the paint right up.

I do think some of it is beautiful, and I think what Banksy does is brilliant, but it only belongs where permitted by the property owner. I guess its being illicit, though, is part of the allure for painters.

Went to see banksy exhibit in Bristol a few years ago, loved it. In Paris there is a building to be demolished but they invited graffiti artists to paint inside and out. The viewing lines are 8 hours long !

No graffiti is art to me and it really irks me when it is considered such. Graffiti equals criminal vandalism! The amount of money spent by cities and business owners trying to remove graffiti is a complete crime. I have rental property that is now the home of the Costa Mesa Locos who regularly tag the building and try to intimidate the tenants. We have painted the building with Graffiti Shield and are constantly removing it.

I also work in San Francisco where the freeway signs are routinely sprayed completely over so that nobody can read them. Just writing about this makes my blood pressure go up!

Sorry to hear that mcbriec, I agree that much of the graffiti art is random and worthless, but every now and then I am driving along and I see some really good art that actually cheers me up. I also like it if it is ironic (like Banksy). Right now I have a huge wall I am praying someone will tag but that is another story.....

HI -- Our city of Calgary put out a call to Artists to paint the electrical boxes with subjects pertaining to that area - like the ones near the zoo - have animals and ones in the Asian districts have Asian themes like dragons and so on . The taggers seam to have a standard of not defacing another artists work . Their are also murals on the sides of some buildings that are beautiful and meaningful that taggers won't paint over . Some of these taggers do incredible things and are very artistic. If they could just do their art on canvas or board , then it wouldn't be wasted and they could sell their Art . The most annoying and troublesome tagging is done by gang members and little punks just for staking out their territory or to simply vandalize which causes cities thousands of dollars every year . A neighbor had a terrible time with his big white garage door being tagged - so they had an artist paint a beautiful picture on it -- so far problem solved . But another neighbor had his- just installed vinyl fence tagged that night . We have always said - if we ever caught any of these little buggers - we would tie them to a post on a busy street and spray paint them for rush hour -- or the city should make them clean it up and also fine them , but they never seem to get caught .

Too bad all the Banksy fans weren't in NYC to scoop up all of his art selling for $60 a pop by an old man in the park. He is so clever! Only a few were purchased and one woman haggled about the price! That is " street art" but most is simple, rotten people de-facing someone else's property. I always call the police to report graffiti, my civic duty of sorts.

I'd spruce up the car door with a semi gloss grey paint then faux paint Mediterranean stone ontop.

My Husband caught a young guy (about 17 or so) spraying paint on the letter boxes late one night when he did a late night trash run. He caught the kid and spray painted him. His clothes, his body, his hair, his bag and all it's contents. The kid was covered in it!
It was a little bit of satisfaction. I'm sure some of you will be shaking your heads at my Husband, but we never did get tagged again!

The street side of the former corner-grocery-store-now-storage-building which we own next to 4-plex we also own seems to be an often hit target.

has anyone had success getting graffiti off of a stone surface. My granite wall was tagged and I haven't been able to find something that will completely remove it.

There used to be a 99 cent store I would drive by on my way to work. The name of the store was called joy. One day as I drove by someone spray painted the word division underneath it. It made my day.

The school building behind our house was tagged with obscenities the night before we put or home on the market. "Die B*%#@*s" is not what I wanted my 11 and 4 year olds to read each time they played in the back yard nor did I want potential buyers to see this. So I walked over to the school to let them know--it was on the back side where they might not have noticed it. Unfortunately it took 3 weeks until a school employee painted over the marks. The very next weekend, it was tagged again. I was not about to wait another 3 weeks when I realized the school's paint was only slightly different than the color of our own house. I had 4 left over gallons of paint so got up really early the next day and painted it myself and did a better, neater job than the school employee. I am not sure the school would have approved of my painting the building, but my neighbors sure did. Taggers returned again a few weeks later, and again I painted over it before anyone could see it. I think the taggers finally gave up--what is the point of tagging if no one will see it?

Under our house, on the downslope side of the property, we have a "man cave" which we didn't think would be affected during our current remodel. However, for structural reasons, the room ended up needing to be gutted. Now we are making it an awesome hang-out with a big wall of graffiti art. The artist we hope to have do it is accomplished and has even documented the history of graffiti art in LA... ergo, street art becomes legit (a la Shepard Fairey, et al.).
As noted by others in this discussion, graffiti art and tagging are two very different things. "Reputable" graffiti artists carefully consider the context and ownership of their chosen "canvas" as well as the message they'd like to convey, whereas taggers are just chickens*#t vandals wanting to feel like bigger people by marking territory.

Taggers in our neighborhood (small town) are stupid entitled white boys who think it's "cool" to act like black "gangsta" kids from "da 'hood". Their tags regularly deface our garage and trash cans. They also deface wall art by responsible, talented muralists (the idea that punks like this "respect" the work of their "fellow Graffiti artists is bullsh!t; the ignorant little brats don't respect anything).

If they're caught, the city makes them do community service cleaning and painting over their messes, which is why my garage door now has about 10 layers of almost-matching paint covering various "tags".

LOVE the idea of spraying these punks with their own paint, like Sharon's husband... Unfortunately, rich entitled "gangsta"-wannabe brats like our local band of little sh!ts would probably come back with their parents' lawyers, and slap you with a huge lawsuit for assault, with damages for inflicting emotional distress, maybe even claiming crippling injury from "toxins" in the paint. (Never mind that they ALSO get high from "huffing" their paints, so if they DID have paint-toxin injuries they would be self-inflicted!) Even if you won the lawsuit, your expenses would probably require a second mortgage.

In Toronto for some public spaces they've painted walls giraffe or zebra..impossible to effectively see anything over it..also there are some schools that have 3d cut outs of kids' art screwed onto outside walls..must be weatherproof too as it has lasted for years,,and leaves less room for others' tagging!

We've fallen victim to graffiti a couple of times. The side of our building is next to our parking lot, and it's nicely painted all one color. Maybe once every two years a kid in the area tags our building and the gas station next door. We have contemplated just hiring a local artist to paint the whole side of the building, thinking the kids wouldn't ruin someone's artwork. But what if they did any way? Plus it's easier to just paint right over it when it happens the solid color.

Amycat, I think you overgeneralize. Most taggers are just plain whiteboys.

Make sure you know what kind of taggers you're dealing with before you try to intervene. I've lived and worked my whole life in the three cities east of East L.A. along the Whittier Blvd. corridor--not the ghetto, but working/middle class cities with home values in the $350K to million+ range. You are taking your life in your hands to interfere with taggers in this area. The police have informed us that at least one of the tagging gangs in our area also sells illicit firearms. I know of two incidents where taggers were shot because of territorial tagging disputes and another of a "grandmother" being shot and killed when she stopped to chastise a tagger. Best to call the police and have their painters come out to repair the damage, which they do quickly and expertly. Schools here photograph tags and pass them on to the police, who keep a database of tags for future prosecutions.

A few years back a not so bright graffiti girl scratched every store window in the street, including my Real Estate office. Using a diamond ring, this young 'artist' tagged her initials, grande large. BE Roks ! Clearly a visitor to our town, but more perhaps due to the intake from Vodka cans this naive soul left behind, she also tagged her motel bathroom mirror. I guess the police had no trouble tracking her back to the home address she booked in with. Lol.

Melbourne City (Aus) is rife with graffiti, know locally as Street Art, it's a tourist attraction in city lane ways and funky olde suburban streets. Moving or not, trains and buses, are targeted too. Freeway bridges and celebrities home walls fall foul to these clowns. The good ones are encouraged by local authorities, who say Street Art is an expression of ? ? ? My own view is that they're disrespectful hoons who should keep well away from my front gate. lol. Anyways....some examples of the 'good' ones below.

I understand the concerns with confronting a tagger etc. We live in Sydney, it was a few years ago and we're both Police Officers. Yes, we have gun crime in Sydney, yes we could have been hurt, yes we could have been sued. It was a judgement call at the time. Was just sharing a one off funny story. Please don't think I am advocating doing the same thing Hubby did.

Public buildings. And alternatives

I call graffiti abatement when I spot tags while walking the dog and it gets taken care of right away. I'm an artist and much of my current work is influenced by tagging and the social conditions that enable it. The attached image is my most recent painting entitled "Frustrated Mayans At the Corner Market". The painting is 5 X 7' and is acrylic, spray paint, and gold leaf on canvas.

Graffiti and street art are different than tagging. I love Banksy and Space Invader (if you haven't seen "Exit Through the Gift Shop" it's a MUST). But tagging is the human equivalent of a dog urinating on a fire hydrant. It's a crime and a blight. I spend summers in Europe and it's really disgusting in Paris and Barcelona. Taggers need to be stopped, but I have no idea how to fix such a prevalent problem.

There is no such thing as a reputable graffiti artist. Painting anything on someone else's property without their consent is vandalism, whether or not you think it pretty.

I live in a neighbourhood that is near a busy street and several bars. Even tho' I'm on a corner, I have never been tagged (hope I'm not jinxing myself). I think it must be because of the automatic lights that go on when people pass because there IS tagging in the area. Our community did the same as Calgary with the electrical boxes. It seems to work.

To those who think this isn't a problem, get your heads out of the sand. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is interesting about seeing property tagged by useless, spoiled, entitled little boys from the suburbs who clearly need to have Mommy and Daddy pay up big time to clean up the mess their good for nothing spawn leave on the planet. I, for one, feel for the citizens of any neighbourhood who have to see this crap and are left having to pay to get it cleaned up. If certain people want to continue to be apologists for these rotten punks, then go ahead, but the next time your neighbourhood gets tagged,shell out big time to clean it up, huh? Any other spoiled punks in your neighbourhood you want to throw a pity party for?

And it is vandalism and a CRIME. Do you want to wake up one day seeing a swastika on the property next to you? That's what happened to me. Yeah, that's very artisitic, isn't it? Those poor, poor gang boys, they just don't have an outlet for their art, huh? Such a shame that the world doesn't understand it owes these precious people a living, huh? The taxpayers shell out enough money to clean up after these punks, maybe they can get something called jobs and pay up for their crimes.

Since I posted above, I still have no graffiti, but someone (I think I might know who) put a large sticker of a pair of lips on the corner of the top panel of my garage door. It actually makes me smile when I see it.